


This time it's sink or swim

by KiriJones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Post Season 1, alice and Fred go way way back, alice has more secrets than she can count, hal is nice but can also be a douche, legacies our parents leave us, niceguy!fred, some involve fred, sur, survivalist!alice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 03:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiriJones/pseuds/KiriJones
Summary: Here are a few important things to know:Alice Cooper née Shaw is a serpent by birth and a survivalist by nature. She has shed her skin so many times and collects secrets like they are going out of style. Fred Andrews is a good man but his compassion is his weakness that has led to trouble more than once. The pair have known each other more than twenty years. They are tied together by a tangled web of emotion, blood, promises, and secrets.Or when Fred Andrews is shot and lays at death's door Alice Cooper must fight the world to keep long made promises.





	This time it's sink or swim

Alice Cooper does not have many friends. She does not let her form attachments to people that way any more. But she does have allies. People whom share common goals and will work together to achieve them. A journalist by trade and dangerously inquisitive by nature Alice has always made it her business to know the business of others. Secrets are her bread and butter. She has many that she can call upon or trade to get what she wants. Call it blackmail or whatever you like. Alice had decided long ago that she would never let anything stand in her way after facing down the barrel of a gun with an almost certainty of a bullet going between her eyes. 

So when she gets a call from a nurser at Riverdale General Hospital informing her FecAndrews has been shot she drops everything and races to her destination. Alice hates hospitals. Every time she has gone to one aside from the births if her children death always awaits her like an old friend with misery her constant companion. When she arrives she is greeted by a bloody Archie Andrews and her heart drops. 

The boy looks dazed and Alice goes over to demand answers. All he can offer her is a murmur of indecipherable mumblings. Instead she hunts down an orderly and intimidates her way into information. Let it never be said that she, Alice Cooper, was anything less than formidable. Once she has all the information she requires Alice calls Hal and tells him of the situation leaving explicit instructions he is to keep this all to himself. She can not have Elizabeth and Jughead, FP's spawn, running amuck. 

She returns to the waiting room to find Archie sitting with him head in his hands. Her heels clack on the ground and he looks up with tears bloodshot eyes. 

"Why are you here??" He demands with a fury that reminds Alice of his mother. Mary was many things and always seemed to possess a righteous fury that her son seems to have inherited. 

She considers ignoring him but knows it would cause more trouble than it is worth. Alice deals in secrets and is skilled in half truths and white lies. The trick she has found is to tell shades of truth mixed with deflection. Tell enough truth it can satisfy that parties involved. But never reveal all of your cards, never surrender all of the power. 

But if Fred is as gravely injured as she fears then there is no running from this. So a moment of honestly seems to be the only option. She tip ain't nothing from lying or keeping the boy in the dark. So she takes a deep breathe and looks into the eyes of the boy who has his mother's hair. But the rest if him is Fred. 

Fred. The man laying on an operating table fighting for his life. He was once a boy who pulled a trigger so that she could live. Fred who helped her when everyone else had turned their backs. Fred who is one of the only people her cold reptile heart beats for. 

"I am here Archie because as your legal guardian I have a vested interest in what happens. And as your father appointed me with power of attorney should anything like this ever happen it would stand to reason this is the only place for me to be."

The boy gapes at her like a fish. Alice simply ignores him and sits in the uncomfortable hospital chair in her pristine clothes not s hair out of place. She is prepared for a long night and an even longer battle ahead. 

_The documents in front of her are looming with danger signs going off in her mind. Fred sits across from her in their old booth at Pop's diner. This booth is where many important events have occurred for them. It is where she introduced him to FP. It is where he told her about Hermione and then Mary. It is where she left him behind. And now it is where he is asking her to be responsible for his life should the worst happen._

_"Why should I do this Fred? Surely there are better options, Mary for instance or..."_

_Fred interrupts her with a gruff tone that is quiet and serious. " Alice this is just in case the worst ever does happen. Mary is in Chicago. This is not for her. This is for my son. And there is no one else. Not with FP." He stops abruptly talking about the man who has become a shell of himself since Gladys took there daughter and fled this town. "Please Aly. There is no one else I trust with this. Not with my son."_

_And that right there makes her heart stutter and pause in her refusals. Only two people left alive call her Aly. One is sitting in front of her. The other is drinking himself into oblivion in the Southside. The others are gone or tossed in the Sweetwater Riverin an oil barrel burnt and forgotten. He calls her Aly and says he trusts her. Alice trusts no one. It is how she survived the Southside and all its horrors. She is a product of her environment. A serpent cold and deadly. Yet this man trusts her even after all of these years.mafter the secrets and lies and hurt. He trusts her with his life and his son._

_So she says nothing as she signs the papers. Silence settles between them as she drinks her mint milkshake and he eats a burger. Alice pays the bill. He paid the last time. And as she walks out she sends a prayer to a god she never truly believed in that it will never come to her having to fulfil the promise she just made._


End file.
